We here at SBM have been very critical of Dr. Mehmet Oz, who through his relentless self-promotion (and with more than a little help from his patron Oprah Winfrey) has somehow become known as “America’s doctor.” Back in the early days, when he was the regular medical expert on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Dr. Oz was at least tolerable. Much of what he discussed was reasonably science-based and even sensible, mainly advice to eat better and get more exercise, which is what most primary care doctors tell their patients every day. True, he did “integrate” some non-evidence-based therapies in with the evidence-based therapies, which was not good given how a typical viewer wouldn’t be able to tell where the science-based advice ended and the magical thinking began, but for the most part, even on Oprah’s show, he kept his woo somewhat in check. At least, there were boundaries beyond which he wouldn’t pass, even though Dr. Oz’s wife is a reiki master and he has been a fan of reiki (gaining fame for inviting reiki masters into his operating room during cardiac surgery) since at least the 1990s. More recently, Dr. Oz has testified in front of NCCAM patron Senator Tom Harkin’s committee to promote “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) or, as its advocates like to call it now, “integrative medicine.” He’s also been the Medical Director for the Integrative Medicine Program at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center since 2001. (How he does his TV show, holds a job as a professor of surgery at Columbia University, and holds positions as Clinical Trials of New Surgical Technology, Attending Surgeon, and Director, Clinical Perfusion Services at the same hospital, I’ll never know. He must have the most understanding partners ever.)

Finally, back in April 2011, Dr. Oz’s producers apparently figured out that there was a problem with Dr. Oz’s image, except that they saw it as an opportunity to gin up a little controversy on the show. They invited our very own Dr. Steve Novella on the show as the “skeptic” who criticizes Dr. Oz. I very much admire Steve for going into the lion’s den, where, he knew in advance, he would be the underdog and the audience would be against him. Steve acquitted himself well, and after his appearance, I have to admit, I pretty much stopped paying attention to Dr. Oz for several months. He basically faded into the background of quackery, a prominent voice “integrating” quackery with medicine, pseudoscience with science, in the apparent belief that mixing fantasy with reality somehow improves medicine. Personally, I prefer Mark Crislip’s take and will steal his statement about “integrative medicine”:

If you integrate fantasy with reality, you do not instantiate reality. If you mix cow pie with apple pie, it does not make the cow pie taste better; it makes the apple pie worse.